


These Are The Rules

by blue_spruce



Category: You Could Make a Life Series - Taylor Fitzpatrick
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 03:02:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7490847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_spruce/pseuds/blue_spruce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the worst sort of compulsion, the way his mind keeps going down these same worn paths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Are The Rules

**Author's Note:**

  * For [singeli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singeli/gifts).
  * Inspired by [fragments of festivity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7479918) by [youcouldmakealife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife). 



Jake has a headache by the time he and Forster and Parent make it back to the hotel. It’s late, late enough that tomorrow morning’s gonna be a bitch, and there’s a dull ache at the base of Jake’s skull, and the fucking elevator is taking _forever_ –

Jake just really wants to lie down.

“Night,” Parent says quietly when they make it to their floor, peeling away towards his room. Forster knocks a fist against Jake’s shoulder a moment later, and finally, _finally_ Jake is pushing his way into his own room and kicking the door shut behind him.

He stands in the shallow hallway for a moment, eyes closed, and rolls his shoulders, trying to let out the tension that’s been sitting there all day. It doesn’t really help.

The low rattle of the heat kicking on nudges Jake into motion. He pulls his shirt over his head and goes into the bathroom, turning on the shower as he finishes stripping off the rest of his clothes.

It feels good to step into the hot water. Jake turns his back to the spray and lets the water pound against the knot of muscle at the base of his neck, reaching up to rub circles over his temples. He sighs, letting his eyes slip shut again.

It would be really great if he could get over David already. It feels like failure that he can’t seem to just shut his feelings off. It feels like – if he just had a little more self-discipline –

Jake’s mouth twists. _David_ would have the self-discipline. How’s that for irony, or whatever the hell it is. 

Tonight had flat-out sucked, starting with the moment during warm-ups when he’d seen David lift a hand from across the ice and assumed the small wave was meant for him. He’d only realized his mistake after he’d raised his own arm in response, when he noticed fucking _Volkov_ out of the corner of his eye. Humiliating. He hopes David hadn’t seen; he might not have, it’s not like they so much as made eye contact all goddamn night.

The thing that really burns is the way that he can’t even enjoy the win. Not only was it Volkov ( _fucking_ Volkov) who scored their only goal, Jake also was treated, in the locker room after the game, to the knowledge that Volkov and David were going to be hanging out tonight.

Get over it, he tells himself again, scrubbing a hand over his face. It’s pathetic that you’re still hung up on him, just – just stop already.

He shuts the water off and gets out of the shower, drying himself off roughly while he brushes his teeth. He leaves the towel in the bathroom when he’s done, wandering naked around his room and picking things up in preparation for leaving tomorrow morning. It’s cold in the room but it feels kind of nice; there’s nothing to think of, now, except the increasing desire to get in bed.

Jake groans when he finally lays down. It’s always like a whole-body sigh of relief, the moment when overtired muscles finally relax all the way. He turns off the bedside light and pulls the covers up over his head for a minute, until the air grows stifling.

Jake isn’t stupid, okay, no matter what Forster and Parent think. And he’s trying. He’s made rules for himself that he follows the best he can, like… he doesn’t google David’s name, he doesn’t let himself daydream about what could have been. He doesn’t let himself fantasize about David anymore, because it’s just – it’s not helpful. It leaves him feeling bad, after, kind of bruised-feeling, a little empty space echoing beneath his ribs.

Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes not. It’s easier when he hasn’t seen David for weeks or months, safe down in Florida with the life he’s built for himself. Harder on nights like tonight, when he’d stood across from David at the face off circle and remembered in vivid detail so many things. Tonight he had watched David chewing on his mouth guard and his mind had jumped without his approval to a memory of David sucking him off. It was from that second summer they had spent together, both of them more confident, familiar with each other’s bodies. David had been carrying more muscle; they had both seemed more like men, although from his current vantage point Jake thinks they were both impossibly young.

It’s the worst sort of compulsion, the way his mind keeps going down these same worn paths. Jake closes his eyes in the dark, like that makes it any better when he reaches down between his legs and presses his hand gently against the length of his cock.

His heart is knocking a heavy, sick rhythm against his ribcage. Jake bites his lip hard against the possibility of sound escaping and slowly, slowly closes his fingers around his shaft, silently cursing his own self-control.

One of his favorite things about David’s cock had been his foreskin. Maybe it was just the novelty, but he had found it an endlessly fascinating process to bring David to hardness; Jake thinks about it as he touches himself, drawing his thumb over the slit and smearing the wetness there over his cockhead. He had loved to take David’s cock into his mouth when it was still soft and work his tongue under the foreskin, licking delicately at the head while he used his hand on the shaft. It had seemed kinda poetic and shit, the way the head was covered most of the time; like David’s dick was _shy_ , just like David himself was. And Jake was the one coaxing him out of his shell. It was intoxicating.

David had probably thought he was a giant weirdo. He never complained about the blowjobs, though. Jake lets out a heavy breath, almost a moan, as he pinches at one of his nipples under the covers. The other great thing about David being uncut was that Jake could spring handies on him, like, anywhere. No need for lube. Jake could use lube right now, actually, but getting up to rummage through his suitcase means committing to jerking off while thinking of David, which is a Bad Idea.

Jake knows this from experience.

He scrunches his eyes closed even tighter and turns his head sideways, down towards his shoulder. David was the most uptight person Jake had ever been with when it came to sex, but with the right encouragement he could loosen up a little. Jake had ambushed him in the kitchen one time that summer, come up behind him while he was rinsing the last of the dishes in the sink and pressed in close, kissing down David’s neck and sliding his hands all over the front of David’s body.

Jake squeezes himself a little and lets his other hand slide lower, down his chest and over his abs, the touch light and tickly. David had ignored him for a minute, focused on the task at hand, like always. And then Jake had dipped the tips of his fingers under the band of David’s sweats, and David’s attention had shifted just like Jake hoped it would. “What are you doing,” David asked. He rinsed his hands and shut off the water, and Jake had drawn his hands back up, a slow caress of David’s abs through the thin fabric of his t-shirt.

“Nothing,” he said, aiming for teasing, for nonchalance, for anything that wouldn’t give away the way his heart was racing in his chest at the feel of David’s smaller body pinned between him and the counter. David didn’t bottom, not ever, but standing like this, Jake’s groin flush against David’s ass, he could imagine it. The idea burned, fever-bright.

He kissed David’s neck again, gratified by the tiny sound David made. “Jake,” David said, a warning, when Jake slid his fingers into David’s pants again.

“I want to touch you,” Jake had murmured, and when he started to push the sweats over David’s hips, he had been almost shocked that David had let him.

David had blown him, after, kneeling right there on the kitchen floor.

“Fuck,” Jake says, under his breath, and then again, louder. “ _Fuck_.” His cock feels heavy and full, blood-hot under his hand; he lets go of himself and digs his fingers into the sheets. He should never have started this tonight. The desire to fuck, to rut up into his hand or down against the mattress, to stop thinking and just feel: it’s stronger than his good sense, than all his good intentions. “God damn it.”

He tells himself that he’s going to stop even as he rolls over and grinds down once, experimentally, against the mattress. He could stop, if he wanted to. He hasn’t gotten off thinking about David for months, now, it’s not like he needs it.

It’s almost too hot under the covers. Jake spreads his knees wide and rolls his hips down into the mattress again. The sheets feel prickly-warm against the skin of his thighs, his stomach, his chest, and he feels sweat start to break out on the back of his neck. His stomach feels molten. David used to fuck him in this position. Or basically like this, anyway; Jake had been up on his knees, more, at least to start, ass up, his head and chest pressed against the bed. David would kneel in between his spread legs and carefully work lube into him with his long fingers. He was always so clinical about it, so careful, like it was possible to do it wrong.

Waiting like that for David to start pushing into him had always been both the worst and best thing, an awful, weird mix of vulnerability and shame and shamelessness never failing to close Jake’s throat. Even now, lying flat against the bed with his thighs spread wide, he can feel the echo of it.

Jake groans, low in his chest, and gives into the urge to keep grinding down against the bed. His cock is leaking, now, and he can feel the tacky wetness smearing against his belly.

It feels slutty even in the privacy of his own head to admit that what he wants is the weight of another body to be the force rocking his hips forward. It’s different, though: humping the bed of your own volition and having someone do you hard enough to _make_ you. David’s strong; the full force of him slamming into Jake’s body would have them sliding up the bed if Jake didn’t brace himself against it.

Fuck, he misses it.

He’s thinking about David’s body when he comes; the cut of muscles at his waist, his compact gracefulness. The weight of him, and the way Jake could bear it when David would slump over his back, spent.

Regret settles over him before his breathing even steadies, a familiar ache tugging at something deep in his chest. Jake sighs, rolling away from the wet spot and curling in on himself. There’s nothing to be done about it now, but at least they’re flying out of Washington tomorrow. He’ll leave this all behind him then.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on [my tumblr](http://blue--spruce.tumblr.com)!


End file.
